Category Archives: Padmini Chettur

This category features the productions of Padmini Chettur – Chennai-based practitioner and choreographer of contemporary dance. She is one of the co-founders of B21.

Padmini (b. 1970) began her training in the traditional Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam. From the years 1991 she worked with the choreographer Chandralekha for ten years and her own artistic research began in 1994. She departs from the classical repertoire of gestures, posturing and mythical tales, to shape an alternative, no less strict, but very condensed. Looking for complete detachment from her classical formative years, she resists the temptation to seduce, choosing instead, to convince. At the core of her work is resistance. Her work unveils a taut vision that takes the contemporary dance of India, from what it is and how it should look, to radical dimensions.

In addition to choreography and performances, Padmini is a teacher of Contemporary dance and Pilates.

‘Kolam‘ (2014) is an 11 minutes long dance piece choreographed by Chennai-based contemporary dancer Padmini Chettur commissioned by French choreographer David Rolland, as part of the contemporary performance project ‘Stranger in Indian Paradise‘ conceptualized and created by David Rolland Choréographiesin association with Basement 21. It shows ten dancers walking on a 400 sq. ft. carpet decorated with a gigantic kolam. The dancers movealong the curved lines halted by grids for the steps. As is the baseline of Rolland’s project (a continuation of an earlier project named ‘Stranger in the Paradise’), the dancers walk with the aid of pre-recorded audio guided scores. The stark contrast of the intense calm, concentration and sense of rhythm of the inner dancer’s self strictly following the individual set of instructions (recorded by Chettur and Rolland) through earphones, the apparently crude and chaotic background score (audible to the audience only) composed by Maarten Visser and the lighting designed by Rolland – ranging from a flat white (bright against the vivid purple of the floor) to the robotic lighting towards the end leads this short artistic statement to a dramatic high.

‘Wall Dancing‘ (2012) is a three hours long dance production choreographed by Chennai-based contemporary dancer Padmini Chettur in the year 2012. It explores the relationship of the dancer’s body, alone and collectively, with the surfaces around her. A wall that a dancer leans on can be a real wall, or the floor, or other bodies in the same space, or even the vacuum. The audience is encouraged to move within the space to explore the three-dimensionality of the piece.

“I see this work as a construction. A construction in space, a construction of time. The dancers are the discreet segments of a unique mathematical equation. An equation that is balanced, where disjointedness is sewn together. Blocks of movements are added, subtracted, multiplied until finally we arrive at meaning.